Follow live updates about China’s Victory Day military parade as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un attend Xi Jinping’s WWII commemorative event in Beijing.

China also showed off two submarine drones, the older-model HSU001 and debuting the much larger AJX002. China’s official Xinhua News Agency called them “cutting-edge surprise weapons for naval combat” designed for “covert deployment and blockade, autonomous detection and identification, and swarm-networked attacks.”

China’s military parade, and the earlier economic gathering, is more of the self-interested, diplomatic jockeying that has marked regional power politics for decades.

Chinese President Xi Jinping warned the world was facing a choice between peace or war at a massive military parade in Beijing on Wednesday, flanked by Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un in an unprecedented show of force.

The main Russian nighttime targets were civilian infrastructure, especially energy facilities, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, as another winter approaches three years after Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor.

It was a grand display of China's ambitions as thousands of goose-stepping soldiers marched through Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing, as Chinese President Xi Jinping looked on from above.

The Kremlin chief will stay in China for several days for a security summit that will also be attended by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Russia’s president defends the military campaign in Ukraine, blaming NATO and Western policies for the conflict.